My Very Best Friend (7 page)

I experienced some befuddlement.

“We get together with a group of women and talk gardening. Plants, flowers, plans, failures, and successes,” Olive said, “then we gobble food, tea, wine, and gab. Talk.”

“Would you like come?” Gitanjali asked. “Not much yelling at Gabbing and Gobbling Group. Sometimes. We control.” She sighed. “We try control.”

She was a sweet, compassionate person, I could tell. I wish I still had that side to me. I think it left me when I left Scotland as a teenager, the land absorbing my tears.

“We say what we please about men, marriage, women’s roles in our changing society, politics, and social issues after we talk about gardening,” Olive said. “We don’t always agree about those issues or how to kill slugs. One time one of the ladies threw a bag of daffodil bulbs at one of the women, and another time we had a yelling fight and one woman landed in my geraniums, but that was all the violence.”

Violence? In a garden talk group?

Gitanjali cleared her throat. “Not yet all. I be truth. We have one sad and scary incident with apple tree.”

“It wasn’t sad,” Olive argued. “Two of the women were having an argument about who had better apple trees. They brought in apples for everyone to taste in a blind taste test. Well, the Obnoxious One, Lorna, lost and she threw a fit, then threw apples. One forehead was bruised.”

“And there Hydrangea War.” Gitanjali shook her head, made cluck-cluck sounds. “That another problem.”

Olive waved a hand as in, “Let’s not bother.”

“People feel strongly about hydrangeas and soil composition,” I said. “The colors, acid, lime, pruning . . .”

“I will admit our talks on politics and social issues can become a mite heated. Scottish temperaments in the room altogether.” Olive exhaled.

Gitanjali’s gold bracelets tinkled. “I say the politics not belong in same room as roses and the zinnias.”

“Dangerous nights, they are,” Olive said.

“I’m in,” I said.

“You’re in what?” Olive said.

“I mean, I’d like to come.”

“Tuesday night is invitation,” Gitanjali said, smiling, her dark eyes shining. “It will be delight. No throwing.” Her brows came together. “Probably no throwing.”

“With a pinch of excitement and minor violence and small temper tantrums,” Olive said, playing with the dizzy white cat. “Don’t you mind it now.”

I wondered at my easy acceptance to the St. Ambrose Ladies’ Garden, Gobbles, and Gabbling Group. Was that the correct name?

I avoid people. I don’t like them much. I don’t like groups of women, either, whose conversations can be too fast and too confusing, sometimes shallow and mundane. Not enough science or math, conversations that don’t allow for emotions, which is, I know, partly why I’m attracted to both subjects. But what to say when I can’t relate to the subject?

But this was gardening. I had longed for someone to discuss it with.

Maybe I longed for people to talk to about anything?

No.

That could not be true. Could it?

“Thank you, Gitanjali and Olive. I’ll be there.”

We chitchatted, they drove off, and Silver Cat wrapped herself around my legs. I picked her up and stared into her eyes. “I miss my cats. They are the best company of all, but you’re acceptable, too.”

I thought of Toran.

“Toran is more than acceptable.”

Silver Cat leaped out of my arms and killed another mouse.

“You’re an adept killer.”

She dropped the dead mouse out of her mouth and meowed. I meowed back.

I put my garden gloves back on and started hauling out junk. Broken lamps, couch cushions (now mice homes), piles of moldy clothing and blankets, a wad of rubber bands, a massive collection of beer bottles, and the entire contents of the refrigerator, which I was sure was growing things that had never been seen before, including something red that resembled an electrified blood clot and something deep gray that appeared to move on its own.

Yuck and yuck. I like biology but not refrigerator biology.

I didn’t see it at first. It was covered with food wrappers, a bicycle tire, a truck bumper, and a medium-sized cage. But once I cleared that off, my parents’ dining room table appeared, built by my granddad.

“Oh.” I ran my hand over it. “Oh.” I wanted to hug it. “Oh.”

We had eaten here. My father and mother and I. I had rolled bread with my mother and grandma, made jams and jellies, cut out Christmas sugar cookies, and made black buns with currants. I had helped my father make salmon noisettes with watercress and tomatoes. I had helped my mother make honey cake. We sang Scottish songs here. My grandma made her Scottish Second Sight predictions. I couldn’t believe the table was still here.

I heard my granddad’s booming laugh ringing in my head . . . my father’s Scottish stories and legends . . . the bagpipes he used to play . . . my mother singing American rock songs and quoting Gloria Steinem.

I looked underneath it. Yes, there they were.

My granddad and grandma’s names, my father and mother’s names, my and Bridget’s names. One rainy afternoon, Bridget and I had made a tent over the table with sheets and blankets and had played with a kids’ laboratory my parents had bought me. We decided to sign the table as Scientist Bridget and Scientist Charlotte inside a red heart.

I ran my finger over our names, and my eyes became misty. Ah, poor Bridget. I sat cross-legged under the table. Poor Bridget. What nightmares came clawing for her later . . .

“What else is here?” I asked Silver Cat before I lost my emotional control. I found our armoire, which was now crooked, in one of the three bedrooms upstairs, clothes strung across it so that it was almost hidden, with a kitchen sink and bicycle handlebars on top. My granddad had built it for my grandma, a honeysuckle vine carved into the doors. The armoire had held my mother’s china from her wedding and frames of our family.

I found two of our wood chairs in the master bedroom, upside down, near a car engine, two shovels, a tent, and a tarp. Each had a wobbly leg. My granddad had made them, too. My mother would sit in them while braiding my hair.

All the furniture had to be restored. Every piece needed to be sanded and restained. There were dents and scratches and structural problems, and they were filthy. They would all look much better when a trained hand was done with them. I had never thought of them as special when I was a kid, but now they were priceless.

They had belonged to my parents and grandparents. They were part of our past, our history, and our memories.

I missed my father. I missed my grandma and granddad. I even missed my ball-breaking mother in South Africa already. Contact with her for the next year was going to be sketchy because of the phone service.

I missed our life here in Scotland. I missed Bridget.

I heard a grumbling truck and peeked out the window. It was Toran. I wiped the tears off my face, refastened the clip on top of my head, forced myself to think of Madame Curie and her research to gain my composure, and headed out.

He smiled, then his face grew concerned. “What is it, Charlotte?”

I waved my hand. “Nothing. Dust in my eyes.”

“Ah, Char.” He gave me a hug. “I know. You have not been home in so long and yet this is what you find. Your childhood home in disrepair, a wreck, filled with the trash of someone else, nothing of what you remember here. The house has changed, but the memories remain of your father, bless his soul, your mum, your grandparents, and how you were as a family here together.”

I nodded, sniffled too loud.

“This was your life, your home, and it was all lost to you so quickly. And here you are, twenty years later, a huge task ahead of you, to clean it out, and maybe sell it. Ah, too much. Too hard.”

I took a tissue out of the pocket of my skirt. Never travel without a tissue. I couldn’t help but snuggle into the warmth of his arms.

“I cannot take away the pain of what you’re feeling, the loss, but I can help you. I have taken the rest of the day off to get this cleaned up.”

“No, Toran. This is not your problem.”

“Aye, it is. I want to help. I got up early to work on the farm. I thought you would be asleep for hours after your long flight. My employees are doing what needs to be done. So I’m here. Let’s have a look, shall we?”

He stood in the doorway, those shoulders filling it. “Worse than I remembered from yesterday. Give me a minute, and I’ll make a call. We’ll get this fixed straight away.”

He drove off, went home, came back, and half an hour later at my house there were six men who worked for Toran. They were friendly, cheerful.

“Here’s what we have to do,” Toran announced.

It was amazing what eight people could do. We had to get another giant bin, but by the end of the day—and it was a long, endless day, the sky dark when we were done—the house was cleared. Even the gross, moldy, yucky mattresses that probably had snakes living inside of them and a pantry full of the worst throat-clogging junk food were cleared out. We also removed an empty hornet’s nest, a pair of antlers painted pink, and a freakish clown puppet.

The kitchen had been removed. There was no way to sell the house with it there. The curtains were ripped down, the garage cleared out, the carpets Mr. Greer had had installed ripped up. I did not gape
much
when Toran took off his shirt, as the other men had, and lifted furniture in a white undershirt. He was muscled up, tight and hard.

I chatted with the men who came to help. They were interested to know that I live on an island off the coast of Washington. I was vague about my job when they asked and started talking about the tomatoes I grew, three types, and my garden. I told them I had four cats and enjoyed studying the latest in science research and development. They asked if there were whales, and I said yes, many.

In the end everyone left and it was Toran and I, and Silver Cat, who meowed.

“I will pay you for your employees’ time.”

“No, luv. It’s my favor to you.”

“That’s against my feminist leanings.”

“Your what?” His brow furrowed.

“My feminist leanings. My feminists ideals. My belief system on what it means to be a woman independent of men, rebelling against a society that says women need to be paid for and taken care of.”

“I hardly understood what you said, Charlotte, but it’s a gift, and we don’t need to talk about it anymore. Make me a pie in exchange. Here, let’s test your aim.” He reached down for a pile of cracked plates. We stood fifteen feet away from the bin.

I glanced at the plates. They had naked women on them. “How can you eat staring at a crotch?” I muttered.

Toran chuckled. “Well, I suppose it depends on whose it is.”

I blushed.

“But not these, for sure,” he said. “Toss ’em.”

“I want you to take the money, Toran. It’s my house. I’ll pay to have it cleared.”

“Make me a pie, as you did before. I love your pies. The best ever.”

I admit I blushed with pride, then put my hands on my hips.

“Don’t do that, Charlotte. I remember that expression from when you were younger. Stubborn. Accept a gift.”

“That’s hard for me, especially from a man.”

“You’re back in Scotland.” He grinned. “Let me be the man.”

Let him be the man?

He saw my hesitation. “I’m the man, you’re the woman, I pay to clean out your house.”

“That’s not part of the rules.”

“Aye, lass. I don’t like rules. But I do like you. Very much. Here, let’s have a throwing contest. I’ll bet I’ll win.”

He knew that would get me. It always did when we were kids.

I grabbed a naked girl crotch plate. Who would believe that tossing dishes into a bin would make me laugh so much.

We threw plates, then cracked tea cups that said, “Bash Your Balls and Bagpipes.” Next we cracked bowls with women’s busts barely covered by Scottish tartans. Toran won every time, though I did try to calculate angle, length of toss, and wind velocity, of which there was little.

“I will have to practice this,” I told him.

“It’s rather fun, isn’t it? Takes your mind off things.”

We stared at each other and he smiled, his blue eyes comparable to blue heat. The years fell away and we became who we were as kids: King Toran and Queen Charlotte. Two of the four rulers of the Enchanted Woods. Dragon Slayers. Evil Emperor Destroyers. Champions of the Scottish people. Enemies of a tyrannical King of England.

“I’m glad you’re here, Charlotte.”

“Me too.”

He put a hand up. I placed my hand against his. “Let victory unite us,” we said, together.

I blinked. It was still there.

“We always knew what chant to say, Char.”

“We did.” There had been many chants, but we repeatedly picked the same one.

It had been uncanny how connected we were, but I had loved him as if he was part of my own soul.

My soul had missed Toran.

As I drove back to Toran’s, I thought about what I was doing. It would cost a fortune to remodel the house. It would be cheaper to bulldoze it and sell the land.

I thought about flattening the house my great-grandfather built.

I absolutely could not do it.

I turned toward the green Play-Doh-like hills in the distance, now covered in nighttime’s shadows. Beyond them was the Mackintosh/Ramsay graveyard.

It was where my father was buried. I would go and see my father at his grave, covered in daffodils and bluebells. I would go and pay my respects. Not yet, though.

Not yet.

In my field, romance writing, everyone expects the writer to have a rollicking love life. Panting under the sheets, sexual gymnastics, creative lovers. A change in lovers now and then when you get bored, bad-boy attraction without giving up your power, maybe tattoos, dark hair and smoldering eyes. Blah blah blah.

I know many romance writers—not that I’ve met many, because I don’t go to conferences and conventions and that sort of silliness, but we do write and call—and that image is rarely true. In fact, I don’t know anyone who has a man toy. Some of the romance writers I correspond with have been married twenty, thirty, even fifty years to the same man. Most of them write their romance novels in pajamas, ponytail on their head, door shut to the outside world.